Your Right to Know

Waiting in the back of the union hall to hear Vice President Joe Biden’s message that the Obama
administration is restoring jobs in Ohio, Wayne Wheatley had his doubts.

The owner of an eight-employee trucking company in Columbus said he’ll probably vote for
President Barack Obama but could support Mitt Romney if he is convinced the Republican presidential
candidate has a better economic plan.

Wheatley, 59, said he’s disappointed by Obama’s focus on health-care reform. “I would’ve liked
to see him do more work on jobs and for small-business people like myself. I’ve seen so many small
businesses close. That should’ve been our main emphasis first.”

Judging by the reception Biden received yesterday from several hundred at the Plumbers &
Pipefitters Local 189 hall on Kinnear Road, Wheatley was an outlier in the room. His misgivings
about Obama’s handling of the economy were not widely shared — especially by the vice
president.

In a 28-minute speech, Biden hailed a “renaissance happening here in Ohio,” saying that
manufacturing is back under Obama, creating “jobs you can build a family on.”

Biden, making his sixth visit to Ohio this year, portrayed Romney as a wealthy outsourcer of
jobs and of his own fortune.

“Did you ever think you’d see a presidential race when you’re choosing between one guy with a
million bucks in the Cayman Islands and a Swiss bank account and the other guy invested in the
United States?” Biden asked, rhetorically, to cheers.

Launching a double-pronged attack against Romney for sending jobs overseas as head of Bain
Capital and for favoring tax breaks for American companies that create jobs abroad, Biden said jobs
are returning in the industrial sector because “we have the most productive workers in the
world."

A new poll showed voter confidence in Obama’s handling of the economy waning, but Biden reminded
the audience about the dire straits the economy was in when Obama took office in 2009. Since then,
the Obama campaign says, the country has seen 28 consecutive months of private-sector job growth,
creating 4.4 million jobs nationwide since March 2010.

A
New York Times/CBS News poll on Wednesday showed that only 39 percent of voters say they
approve of Obama’s handling of the economy, with 55 percent disapproving. Those numbers have
worsened for the president since April, when the poll showed 44 percent approved and 48 percent
disapproved.

Beyond a doubting Wheatley, naysayers were difficult to find in the union hall.

“The president inherited a big problem, and he’s got us going in the right direction,” said
Michelle Girves, 46, who works at a Meijer store in Columbus.

Susan Allardyce, a Grandview real-estate agent, said Obama has “done all he can to handle the
economy” but has been stymied by Republicans in Congress. She said she has “a tough time thinking
Romney would have the good of the people at heart because he’s never had any experience with
working people.”

In advance of Biden’s trip, the president’s campaign released a six-page document — “Ohio
Manufacturing: A Comeback Story” — stating that of the 148,300 jobs created in Ohio during the
recovery, 44,700 have been in manufacturing.

Ohio GOP Chairman Robert T. Bennett called the document a “campaign report,” saying that neither
it “nor Biden’s visit will save the president from the reality that he hasn’t stood up to China for
American manufacturing jobs.”

Biden sought to burnish an image of Romney as a job-outsourcer while head of Bain, a
Boston-based private equity firm. Romney says he relinquished all control of Bain in 1999 when he
went to Utah to head the Winter Olympics, but Biden referred to government documents showing Romney
still in charge between 1999 and 2002 when the firm created jobs overseas.

“Folks, this philosophy of outsourcing has stayed with him,” Biden said.

Chris Maloney, Romney’s Ohio campaign spokesman, accused Biden of “dishonest attacks to distract
from President Obama’s failed record which has left 425,000 Ohioans looking for work.”

In an interview before the Biden event, Eric Burkland, president of the Ohio Manufacturing
Association with 1,500 member companies, confirmed that the state’s industrial sector has had a
resurgence, but he declined to give credit to a specific politician.

“It’s true, manufacturing is coming back,” Burkland said. “Manufacturers have made significant
investments in technology and in upscaling their work forces and in new products. The
cost-imbalance with China and the rest of the world is correcting itself.”